Whether this summer finds you toes-in-sand, swatting mosquitoes, or killing time between delayed flights, a book is the ideal warm-weather companion. My top summer recommendations were determined with a single criterion in mind: they had to be books I couldn’t put down—even when papers needed grading or dinner needed cooking. From a modern love story set in quiet Kentucky to a dystopian tale imagining the future of artificial intelligence, you can’t go wrong with these summer page-turners.
Summer Book Recommendations
GROUNDSKEEPING, Lee Cole
Lovers of rich, character-driven Southern fiction, this is your summer read. Groundskeeping follows twenty-eight-year-old Owen as he navigates the space between college and adulthood in a rapidly changing, often confusing America. Lee Cole renders his characters, their troubles, and the world at large in a way that is both incisive and tender.
STILL LIFE, Sarah Winman
On a recent trip to my favorite local bookshop, I hardly made it through the door before people were recommending this book to me. “It’s goooorgeous,” more than one person promised me. After 450 enchanting pages, I agree. Still Life is all about ambience: historical fiction set mostly in Florence, Italy, spanning four decades of life and relationships—with a Shakespeare-quoting parrot thrown in. Pairs well with pinot grigio and patios.
LUSTER, Raven Leilani
I’d been in a rare fiction-reading slump when I picked up Luster, and the novel’s fast, delicious, slightly naughty plot was just what I needed to get hooked again. Edie is spending her twenties in a middling apartment in New York, navigating less-than-ideal jobs and relationships. Like the book itself, the character is sharp, delivering comedy and cringe and cultural critique all at once.
KLARA AND THE SUN, Kazuo Ishiguro
Glowing reviews of this book have popped up everywhere, and sometimes, I can’t resist seeing what all the fuss is about. I was hooked a few pages in as it dawned on me that the likable if odd young girl narrating the story was, in fact, a solar-powered robot fueled by artificial intelligence. Set in a bleak, near-future America, the story asks what it means to connect, love, and be human. It is the unique gift of Kazuo Ishiguro to weave stories that leave readers both disquieted and hopeful about society’s technological fate.
WRITERS AND LOVERS, Lily King
Readers usually make a choice: do they want fiction that is smart or fiction that is fun? Writers and Lovers is both. The prose is dazzling but doesn’t slow the story’s momentum; the characters are complex, yet the plot is so readable that I finished the book in two days. I honestly can’t think of anyone I know who wouldn’t like this book about thirty-something Casey, her love affairs, and her deep desire to live a creative life.
Lindsey DeLoach Jones currently teaches creative writing as the Writer-in-Residence at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts. Aside from reading, she plans to spend her summer shooing squirrels off her tomatoes and teaching her five-year-old to swim.
